User interface widget unit sharing for application user interface distribution

ABSTRACT

Embodiments of the invention address deficiencies of the art in respect to application sharing and provide a method, system and computer program product for user interface widget unit based application sharing. In a first embodiment, a data processing system for user interface widget unit based application sharing, can include a dynamic widget server communicatively linked to a dynamic widget browser. The dynamic widget browser can include program code enabled to render a user interface including one or more remote dynamic widgets peered to corresponding dynamic widgets for a dynamic view for an application launched by the dynamic widget server.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computingand more particularly to user interface sharing in a collaborativeenvironment.

2. Description of the Related Art

The rapid development of the Internet has led to advanced modes ofcommunication and collaboration. Using the Internet as a backbone,individuals worldwide can converge in cyberspace to share ideas,documents and images in a manner not previously possible throughconventional telephony and video conferencing. To facilitatecollaboration over the Internet, a substantial collection oftechnologies and protocols have been assembled to effectively deliveraudio, video and data over the single data communications medium of theInternet. These technologies include instant messaging, Internettelephony and application sharing.

In conventional application sharing, an application host can distributeimagery of an application operating in the host to one or moreapplication viewers distributed about the computer communicationsnetwork. The imagery can include not only the screens rendered inassociation with the operation of the shared application, but also thevisual presentation of mouse pointer movements and the like. Generally,speaking, however, the imagery can include only discrete “snap-shots” ofthe actual display of the operating application in the host system. Inthis way, the application viewers can be given the appearance of sharingan application, though each viewer merely views a shadow rendering ofonly a portion of the operation of the shared application.

Pixel based application sharing technology allows the capturing of aseries of images which represent the display of an application. Theimages can be transmitted across the computer communications network,which when rendered, can provide the illusion of duplicating the displayof the application in its host environment. Nevertheless, the underlyingtechnology used to support application sharing in this manner includessubstantial limitations in that an entire application user interface orcomplete desktop user interface must be shared. For example, pixel basedsolutions like virtual network computing (VNC) provide facilities toshare only portions of a user interface. In VNC, the pixels of a screenregion are captured and transmitted to a remote station. However, VNCprovides mere coarse-grained control over the user interface to beshared, while the user interface gratuity is a screen region, whichbrings some substantial limitations.

More particularly, pixel-based screen sharing requires more networkbandwidth, for example, the size of data representing a fifty (50) bythirty (30) button is approximately one kilobyte. Secondly, it is veryhard for the pixel-based screen sharing to understand the content of theuser interface to be shared to meet the requirements of advancedoperations, for example, to re-arrange the layout of the user interfaceto be shared to fit the form factor of the remote station, or to removesome of the private information from the user interface beforetransmitting the information. In consequence, sharing an application ina heterogeneous environment, where the form factors of devices arediverse, network capability is widely different and people have theirpersonal privacy concerns, becomes a great challenge for the traditionalpixel-based application sharing technologies.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Embodiments of the present invention address deficiencies of the art inrespect to application sharing and provide a novel and non-obviousmethod, system and computer program product for user interface widgetunit based application sharing. In a first embodiment, a data processingsystem for user interface widget unit based application sharing, caninclude a dynamic widget server communicatively linked to a dynamicwidget browser. The dynamic widget browser can include program codeenabled to render a user interface including one or more remote dynamicwidgets peered to corresponding dynamic widgets for a dynamic view foran application launched by the dynamic widget server.

In another embodiment of the invention, a method for user interfacewidget unit based application sharing can include separating anapplication user interface for a shareable application into movable andnon-movable graphical user interface widgets, distributing remote peerinstances of the movable graphical user interface widgets to a clienthost for incorporation in a synchronized dynamic view for theapplication, and synchronizing the remote peer instances withcorresponding instances of the movable graphical user interface widgetsin a server host.

Additional aspects of the invention will be set forth in part in thedescription which follows, and in part will be obvious from thedescription, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The aspectsof the invention will be realized and attained by means of the elementsand combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. It isto be understood that both the foregoing general description and thefollowing detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only andare not restrictive of the invention, as claimed.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute partof this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention andtogether with the description, serve to explain the principles of theinvention. The embodiments illustrated herein are presently preferred,it being understood, however, that the invention is not limited to theprecise arrangements and instrumentalities shown, wherein:

FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of a data processing systemconfigured for user interface widget unit based application sharing;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a distributed user interface architectureconfigured to support user interface widget unit based applicationsharing; and,

FIG. 3 is an event diagram illustrating a process for user interfacewidget unit based application sharing in the architecture of FIG. 2.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Embodiments of the present invention provide a method, system andcomputer program product for user interface widget unit basedapplication sharing. In accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention, an application user interface for a shareable application canbe separated into movable and non-movable graphical user interfacewidget units. Each movable graphical user interface widget unit cancorrespond to a different portion of the application where theapplication has been distributed across different server hosts.

The movable graphical user interface widget units can be distributed todifferent client hosts for incorporation in a client user interface forthe application. The state of each instance of a distributed movablegraphical user interface widget in different ones of the client hostscan be synchronized with the state of the application. In this way, theuser interface for an application can be shared, regardless of whetherthe application resides in a single server host, or whether the portionsof the application are distributed across different server hosts.

To facilitate user interface widget unit based application sharing, adistributed view server can provide a framework which allows a clienthost to discover the movable user interface widgets for an applicationon a server host and allows end users to operate on the movable userinterface widgets for distributed rendering. Also a distributed dynamicstandard widget library can be included which provides applications withstandard graphic Application Programming Interface (API), but implementseach API in a distributed fashion. As a result, an application builtupon the library enjoys the option to show a portion or the entire userinterface within a broad range of remote hosts and to receive eventsfrom the remote hosts. For example, the dynamic standard widget librarycan implement APIs of the standard widget toolkit (SWT) known in the artand can extend behaviors of the SWT to permit the distributed renderingof SWT widgets in remote client hosts, and the receipt of user interfaceevents from the remote hosts for distributed SWT widgets in a serverhost to acquire a user's input in the user interface and to keepsynchronization among the source user interface and its distributedcopies.

In further illustration, FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of a dataprocessing system configured for user interface widget unit basedapplication sharing. The data processing system can include a serverhost 120 coupled to one or more client hosts 110 over a computercommunications network 130 which can exist within one computing deviceor across multiple computing devices (only one client host 110 shown forsimplicity of illustration). Each client host 110 can include a dynamicwidget browser 165 configured to browse applications and correspondingviews available for distribution to the client host 110, and to renderuser interface widgets within selected views for selected applications.

The server host 120 can include one or more applications 140. Theapplications 140 can be coupled to a registry 170 which can include alisting of applications and dynamic application views available fordistribution to remote ones of the client hosts 110. The applications140 further can be coupled to a dynamic view server 150. The dynamicview server 150 can include user and policy logic 160A, listener logic160B, session logic 160C and application builder logic 160D. Finally,the dynamic widget server 150 can be coupled to a dynamic workbenchfactory 180 configured to produce one or more dynamic views 175 in acontainer 185 based upon one or more dynamic widgets in a dynamic widgetlibrary 190. Notably, the dynamic widget browser 165 can acquire userinput over a distributed user interface and can detect any change to thedistributed user interface. The user input and change events can beprovided to the dynamic view server 150 for the purpose ofsynchronization.

In operation, applications 140 can be registered with the dynamic viewserver 150 specifying the identity of the application and associateddynamic views for storage in the registry 170. Once the applications 140have been registered with the dynamic view server 150, listener logic160B can receive requests from the client hosts 110. The requests caninclude discovery requests to identify available applications 140 andcorresponding dynamic views, application control requests to launch orclose selected ones of the applications 140, and dynamic view controlrequests to copy, move, multicast and broadcast a selected dynamic viewto fit into a broad wide of use cases. For example, a user can broadcasta dynamic view to a group of people in the case of conference.

An end user can use the dynamic widget browser 165 to interact with thedynamic view server 150. As part of end user interactions, the dynamicview server 150 can validate requests of client hosts 110 using user andpolicy logic 160A. The interactions available to the end user caninclude browsing available applications 140 and corresponding dynamicviews listed in the registry 170. The interactions further can includelaunching selected ones of the applications 140 and requiring thatportions of the user interface for the selected ones of the applications140 are rendered in the dynamic widget browser 165. For each one of theapplications 140 launched in a dynamic widget browser 165, sessionmanagement logic 160C can create a corresponding session.

Once the corresponding session has been created, the dynamic widgetbrowser 165 can report to the dynamic view server 150 with itscapability and characteristics for rendering a distributed dynamic view.The capability and characteristics can be used by the applicationbuilder logic 160D for dynamic view construction. The correspondingsession further can maintain the dynamic state of the dynamic widgetbrowser 165, for example, a list of active distributed dynamic viewshown within the widget browser 165. The dynamic state can be used bythe distributed view server 150 to restore content within the dynamicwidget browser 165 in the case of an unexpected network exception.

Notably, for each user interface request received from a client host110, the application builder logic 160D can create a user interfacelayout for the request. Specifically, the application builder logic 160Dcan call the dynamic workbench factory 180 to create a backgroundcontainer 185 for the response. The application builder logic 160Dfurther can create one or more dynamic views 175 for the container 185.When the application builder logic 160D constructs a dynamic view 175,the application builder logic 160D can consult user and policy logic160A to remove selected widgets that contain privacy information, forexample e-mail address, and mobile phone numbers from the source view.The application builder logic 160D further can re-arrange the layout ofthe source view to adapt to the characteristics of the targetdistributed view browser 165. For example, if the size of the sourceview is much larger than the physical size of the window of thedistributed view browser 165, the application builder logic 160D canseparate the source view into several pages. Finally, the user interfacelayout can be transferred to the client host 110 via the dynamic widgetlibrary 190. The dynamic widget browser 165, in turn, can receive theuser interface layout and can call the local widget library 145 forrendering. The local widget library 145 in turn can call native userinterface API 155 to render the user interface layout in the client host110.

To facilitate the distribution and synchronization of each userinterface widget in a shared view, an underlying user interface toolkitcan be extended to permit peering with remotely disposed and renderedwidgets. For example, as shown in FIG. 2, an SWT widget 210 definedwithin a dynamic SWT library can be extended to include an init( . . . )method 250 and an add_listener( . . . ) method 260. The init( . . . )method 250 can include program code enabled to create a remote peerwidget 220 coupled to a local widget 290. The init( . . . ) method 250can called when the application attempts to create a new instance of anSWT widget 210. The init( . . . ) method 250 in response can transmit anotification to the distributed view browser that consequently createsan instance of the remote peer widget 220.

The add_listener( . . . ) method 260, in turn, can include program codeenabled to create a remote peer listener 230B and add the remote peerlistener 260B to the remote peer widget 220. An application can use theadd_listener( . . . ) method 260 to add an event listener 230A to awidget instance 210. The add_listener( . . . ) method, in turn, cancreate a peer listener 230B within the distributed view browser. Next,the peer listner 230 can register itself to the remote peer widget 220by calling the add_listener( . . . ) method 260B of the remote peerwidget 220.

In operation, calls to the public methods 240A of the SWT widget 210 canbe forwarded to corresponding methods 240B of the remote peer widget220. Moreover, events occurring in the local widget 290 can be routed tothe widget 210 through communications between a listener 230 for thewidget 210 and the peer listener 230B. To support multiple users, alistener table 270A, clone factory 270B and synchronization engine 270Ccan be included in dynamic SWT library 270 used to produce SWT widgets210. Finally, matched dynamic SWT sessions 280A, 280B can be establishedto facilitate communications between remote and local SWT libraries.

In more particular illustration, FIG. 3 is an event diagram illustratinga process for user interface widget unit based application sharing inthe architecture of FIG. 2. As shown in FIG. 3, a client can forward arequest 310 to the dynamic view server to launch an application. Thedynamic view server, in turn, can create 320 a user session for theapplication. Subsequently, the created user session can forward arequest 330 to create a view to the application builder. Thereafter, theapplication builder can create 340 a widget workbench and theapplication builder can repeatedly 350 create 360 one or more dynamicviews. Each of the created dynamic views, in turn, can create 380 andinitiate 370 local widgets, which can, in turn, create 360 remote peerwidgets. Finally, the workbench can open 400 the view for evenprocessing.

Embodiments of the invention can take the form of an entirely hardwareembodiment, an entirely software embodiment or an embodiment containingboth hardware and software elements. In a preferred embodiment, theinvention is implemented in software, which includes but is not limitedto firmware, resident software, microcode, and the like. Furthermore,the invention can take the form of a computer program product accessiblefrom a computer-usable or computer-readable medium providing programcode for use by or in connection with a computer or any instructionexecution system.

For the purposes of this description, a computer-usable or computerreadable medium can be any apparatus that can contain, store,communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or inconnection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.The medium can be an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic,infrared, or semiconductor system (or apparatus or device) or apropagation medium. Examples of a computer-readable medium include asemiconductor or solid state memory, magnetic tape, a removable computerdiskette, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), arigid magnetic disk and an optical disk. Current examples of opticaldisks include compact disk—read only memory (CD-ROM), compactdisk—read/write (CD-R/W) and DVD.

A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing programcode will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectlyto memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can includelocal memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulkstorage, and cache memories which provide temporary storage of at leastsome program code in order to reduce the number of times code must beretrieved from bulk storage during execution. Input/output or I/Odevices (including but not limited to keyboards, displays, pointingdevices, etc.) can be coupled to the system either directly or throughintervening I/O controllers. Network adapters may also be coupled to thesystem to enable the data processing system to become coupled to otherdata processing systems or remote printers or storage devices throughintervening private or public networks. Modems, cable modem and Ethernetcards are just a few of the currently available types of networkadapters.

We claim:
 1. A method for user interface widget unit based applicationsharing, comprising: separating an application user interface for ashareable application into movable and non-movable graphical userinterface widgets; distributing remote peer instances of said movablegraphical user interface widgets to a client host for incorporation in asynchronized dynamic view for the application; and, synchronizing saidremote peer instances with corresponding instances of said movablegraphical user interface widgets in a server host.
 2. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising: registering a plurality of shareableapplications and corresponding views for distribution to client hosts;and, listening for requests to launch selected ones of said shareableapplications.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein said distributing remotepeer instances of said movable graphical user interface widgets to aclient host for incorporation in a synchronized dynamic view for theapplication, comprises: creating said remote peer instances of saidmovable graphical user interface widgets in said client host; and,coupling a listener object to each of said remote peer instances to passevents occurring in said remote peer instances to said correspondinginstances.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein said synchronizing saidremote peer instances with corresponding instances of said movablegraphical user interface widgets in a server host, comprises: listeningfor events received from said remote peer instances; and, forwardingmethod calls to said remote instances from said corresponding instances.5. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computerusable storage medium having computer usable program code for userinterface widget unit based application sharing, said computer programproduct including: computer usable program code for separating anapplication user interface for a shareable application into movable andnon-movable graphical user interface widgets; computer usable programcode for distributing remote peer instances of said movable graphicaluser interface widgets to a client host for incorporation in asynchronized dynamic view for the application; and, computer usableprogram code for synchronizing said remote peer instances withcorresponding instances of said movable graphical user interface widgetsin a server host.
 6. The computer program product of claim 5, furthercomprising: computer usable program code for registering a plurality ofshareable applications and corresponding views for distribution toclient hosts; and, computer usable program code for listening forrequests to launch selected ones of said shareable applications.
 7. Thecomputer program product of claim 5, wherein said computer usableprogram code for distributing remote peer instances of said movablegraphical user interface widgets to a client host for incorporation in asynchronized dynamic view for the application, comprises: computerusable program code for creating said remote peer instances of saidmovable graphical user interface widgets in said client host; and,computer usable program code for coupling a listener object to each ofsaid remote peer instances to pass events occurring in said remote peerinstances to said corresponding instances.
 8. The computer programproduce of claim 5, wherein said computer usable program code forsynchronizing said remote peer instances with corresponding instances ofsaid movable graphical user interface widgets in a server host,comprises: computer usable program code for listening for eventsreceived from said remote peer instances; and, computer usable programcode for forwarding method calls to said remote instances from saidcorresponding instances.